inkjet negatives in a big enlarger - worth doing ?

[freecitizen]

I have come upon a 5x7 DeVere enlarger with dichroic head going very cheap. I already have a 5x4 DeVere which I use for rollfilm now. Getting the 5x7 will cause a considerable space problem in the darkroom so I need to find a justification if I am going to get it. I can see myself shooting 5x4 film one day but never 5x7.

I wonder about using negatives from a very good digital camera, converted to monochrome, and printed on transparency film using an inkjet printer in the 5x7 to make silver gelatin ( wet darkroom ) prints. I know this is usually done in the form of contact prints. Without the enlarger, for bigger prints all I would need to do is make a larger negative in the inkjet printer. Is there any advantage in trying to use a big enlarger for this ? Is this idea just too weird ?

Do you think the quality would be any good from a 5x7 inkjet negative printed to, say, 20x24 inch ? Would my existing 5x4 DeVere do as good a job ?

Perhaps someone here has thought of this or even tried it. Any feedback on this idea would be much appreciated.

Many Thanks .......... freecitizen

 

[waynecrider]

Not being Mr. darkroom printer here, I think what it would come down to is whether you can get something printed onto transparency film that would be as fine as a silver grain in say 100 iso film.

I'd stick with the 4x5 (5x4) btw.

 

[pschwart]

Inkjet negatives have sufficient resolution for contact printing, but not enlarging. There are other strategies for going from digital to film (like CRT recording and LVT); you might want to investigate these, but they can get expensive. I've never tried these, but I wouldn't expect them to equal a contact print from a digital original or a high-quality film scan.

 

[Dr Croubie]

If you need justification for a 5x7 enlarger, do you like panoramae? You can shoot 617s with a 4x5 camera using a DaYi or similar extension back ($400-600), but you need a 5x7 enlarger for them. If you might ever be interested in shooting/enlarging them it could still be worth getting.
Also, I'm presuming the 5x7 enlarger has a higher head than the 4x5. That in itself could be justification enough as it lets you get bigger enlargments (if huge prints are your thing).

 

[Bill Burk]

I know, you are thinking hybrid territory which isn't appropriate here.

You could take 35mm slides, enlarge them onto a sheet of 5x7 film through the camera filter you would have used if you were shooting black and white (yellow/red/etc)...

To make a 5x7 negatives to make silver gelatin prints from.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

This is off topic for APUG, but appropriate for our sibling site, DPUG.org